All Car Sales

All Car Sales is a display label for Table 6 total vehicle sales. It is published by the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA), the federal economics agency. It counts new motor vehicles sold at retail in the United States and feeds gross domestic product (GDP) spending estimates.

The headline appears as SAAR (seasonally adjusted annual rate), a yearly pace in millions after seasonal adjustment (removal of normal calendar effects). Light Total covers autos (cars) plus light trucks (minivans and SUVs up to 14000 pounds), while Total adds heavy trucks (trucks above 14000 pounds).

Sales cover each calendar month of U.S. retail activity, with unadjusted (not seasonally adjusted) counts in thousands and SAAR headlines in millions. BEA posts the file within 2 business days after Omdia (the industry data provider) releases unit sales (vehicle counts), with no fixed clock time. Each release is 1 workbook with sales Tables 1 through 6 plus production, import, export and inventory context in Tables 7 through 10.

Series update as new data arrive, and seasonal factors are re-estimated periodically with revisions applied to prior years. Production and inventories follow the Personal Income and Outlays schedule.

The total is the sum of 5 unit-count components.

• Domestic autos: U.S. sales of cars assembled in the United States, Canada and Mexico, reflecting North American car demand.
• Foreign autos: U.S. sales of cars produced outside the United States, Canada and Mexico, reflecting imported car demand.
• Domestic light trucks: U.S. sales of light trucks assembled in the United States, Canada and Mexico, including minivans and SUVs.
• Foreign light trucks: U.S. sales of light trucks assembled elsewhere, a small part of the total.
• Heavy trucks: Cover trucks above 14000 pounds, the gap between Total and Light Total.

Sales fell from 17.130M Total and 16.669M Light Total SAAR in February 2020 to 11.825M Total and 11.444M Light Total in March 2020. They troughed at 8.919M Total and 8.571M Light Total in April 2020, made of 1.919M autos, 6.652M light trucks and 0.347M heavy trucks. They rebounded to 12.543M Total and 12.244M Light Total in May 2020.

Only about 743.3 thousand vehicles were actually sold in April 2020, but annualization made it look like a full-year collapse. Light trucks stayed about 75% of light sales even at the trough, so the headline remains truck-heavy. Total exceeded Light Total by only about 0.347M from heavy trucks, so the headlines move together.

1. Collect: Gather unadjusted unit sales in thousands by component from Omdia and related import sources.
2. Adjust: Divide unadjusted units by the combined seasonal factor to remove normal calendar and trading-day (weekday mix) effects, using the Census X-13ARIMA-SEATS method. For example, 564.1 thousand units with a factor of 86.37% gives about 653.1 thousand adjusted units. Auto and light-truck factors come from the Federal Reserve Board, and the rest come from BEA.
3. Annualize: Multiply adjusted monthly units by 12 and divide by 1000 to state the yearly pace in millions. For example, 653.1 thousand units becomes about 7.837M SAAR.
4. Add: Sum components with no weights, so Autos plus Light Trucks equals Light Total, plus Heavy equals Total.